Police Corruption Can’t Be Ignored

Chicago Sun-Times

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More than 300 Chicago police officers have been convicted of serious crimes since the 1960s. We list them and our proposed recommendations for curing police corruption in a new report to the mayor and the aldermen. Police crimes include beating innocent citizens, protecting drug dealers, accepting bribes, murder and lying about torture. Thirty percent of these crimes involve police officers convicted of illegal drug dealing and protecting street gangs.

The problem of police corruption is not caused by occasional flawed police officers or “bad apples.” Rather, the apple barrel is rotten. Too many police officers violate citizens’ rights, engage in corruption and commit crimes while avoiding discipline or prosecution.

The blue code of silence and deliberate indifference of police supervisors, the police board, mayor and aldermen have allowed the situation to worsen.

The outright cost of the crimes, corruption, and cover-ups to city taxpayers have been hundreds of millions of dollars — $30 million in payouts this week alone for settling police misconduct cases. The loss of civilian respect for police and their willingness to cooperate in reporting crime is even greater.

The details of the 300 convictions and the changes in police corruption patterns are detailed in our University of Illinois at Chicago report at

http://www.uic.edu/depts/pols/ChicagoPolitics/policecorruption.pdf 

Our most important findings are:

† Police crime and corruption is a major problem that persists unchecked.